Star Wars: The Force Unleased : PS3
I’m going to start by saying that The Force Unleashed is a really really great game. It is fun, has an engaging storyline and really make you feel some of that Sith/Jedi power as you go through the levels. In fact, for 90% of the game it’s pretty much a perfect Star Wars game of this ilk (which is to say a run around and slash things / chuck them about with the force ilk of game). And now I’ve done that, I’m going to say exactly what is wrong with The Force Unleashed…
This means I’m going to be a bit backwards. You see, there’s nothing wrong with the beginning of the game, unless you want to rant about how bloody hard the first few boss fights are - and they are bloody hard! But you learn, and you get past them and you’re a better player for it. So maybe, if I’d written this review after the third mission, my ranting would all be about the discrepancy between the normal level part of the game (not that hard) and the crazy hard boss fights, but I don’t review a game until I’ve finished it, so I want to talk about one specific moment.
It’s the end of the penultimate level. If you’ve played this game, you know exactly what I mean, and if you haven’t, well I’m about to spoiler this bit, so turn away if you don’t want to know.
The thing about The Force Unleashed is that you are a fast moving, lightsabre-wielding, lightning throwing übermensch. You power through leaping around, cutting down swathes of enemies, ripping bits off the wall and throwing them around… it’s great! So why on Earth the developers decided to chuck all of that gameplay out of the window at the end of the penultimate level is beyond me.
Yup, that exactly what they do. All your learning to get better, improving your character and general understanding of the game play has no meaning as you are ‘treated’ to an end of level sequence that is little more than a frustrating, irrelevant and very very difficult mini-game. There’s little need for it in a story-line way. There’s no fun in it whatsoever. It’s horrific. The idea is that you are using the force to cause a Star Destroyer to crash while fending off waves of TIE fighters. The reality is that you are swearing at the PS3, threatening to chuck the controller out of the window and questioning why, why, WHY?! for the seemingly-hours it takes to get past it. The thing is, it’s not that hard when you work out what to do. In fact, when I finally got the hang of the idea, it took me about ten minutes to get past, but it took HOURS to work out what the hell I was meant to be doing. At one point a single go stretched past the hour mark without me dying or being able to do anything to the stupid Star Destroyer. You may think I’m alone here, and it’s my stupidity and not the game designers, but a quick bit of googling shows I’m really not alone.
Why they took a brilliant game and marred it in such a way is beyond me because, if you haven’t already worked this out, The Force Unleashed is a great game! The lightsabre stuff is awesome, the force abilities are all fun and you have enough customisation to allow you to choose which of these abilities to focus on. The difficulty is generally well set, as this is really hard in places where it should be hard and occasionally you really do do better to run away from a fight rather than stand there and try it. There are some amazing fan-boy moments, both in the storyline and in the game itself, including one which had me pause the game and call Jen over to witness because I was so chuffed with how fan-boy-y it was. It’s one of those few games that I want to do again on the ridiculously hard setting, just to see if I can (I probably can’t), and the sequel is definitely going to be bought. It just makes the Star Destroyer section even more horrific really, because of the stuff that comes before and after.
I do have another complaint though, because I was into this game enough to pay the extortionate price for some DLC. I never really do this, as it’s usually just pointless costumes or whatever, but I wanted more game out of this, so I downloaded a mission pack and it’s put me off DLC for some more months. I paid £7.99 (there’s no second-hand DLC shops, unfortunately) for 42 minutes of game play. That is a disgusting rip off. Anyone who has been following my blog for a while will know that I often work out price-per-hour of my games, and most games are very reasonable, coming in at 50p to £1 an hour. In fact, £1 an hour is my benchmark for how expensive a game should be. £7.99 for 42 minutes is £11.41 an hour! Even if I replay the DLC mission through, that’s still silly money. Worse still, it didn’t allow me to play the DLC mission with my established character and save file, so it felt disjointed and not at all like a continuation of my game. All in all, a great big waste.
So there you have it. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed was a great game I played for a good number of evenings with relish and for one night I wanted to chuck it out of the window. Take from that what you will, but I’m getting number two!
